


gehenna

by eraserheadbaby



Category: Tales of Series, Tales of Symphonia
Genre: F/M, Guilt, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23592322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eraserheadbaby/pseuds/eraserheadbaby
Summary: She has long since regained her soul, but he's still struggling to see how she's any different from before.
Relationships: Regal Bryant/Presea Combatir
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	gehenna

She has long since regained her soul, but he's still struggling to see how she's any different from before.

Presea has come so far – she fought hard all by her free will, wielded her axe as a badge of honor, of newfound strength. Crafted goals, a purpose, aspiration, fitful and temporary as they may be for now. Talks more, smiles more, fuses with their mismatched group day by day.

Yet Regal holds onto the moments she is silent; on the times her eyes hold that same hollow humidity as before, on the times they look down on the dirt and refuse to meet any other's eyes. When she's but a hunched form looking away, towards the clouds, and he wonders what she thinks about, as if he has any reason to believe it would be something other than pain, pain he himself caused.

He gets stuck on all the times she get hurt during battle, when red starts seeping out of her wounds, and he pictures that red covering all her small limbs as she lets her final breath escape from those lips that shouldn't be familiar yet they are, they are so familiar it aches just to look at them.

He thinks more of the moments she looks at him, and the anger is still there, sedated but still breathing, enough to take his own breath away. Or the moment her axe hovered over him, and he wished so hard it would slip from those shaky hands, and for a while it seemed she wished the same.

And most of all, he clings onto that first smile. The smile that transfused life and light onto the pallor of that young face, and echoed the heavy memories he bears on his back like a cross, the dead memories he keeps preserving like embalming corpses.

So he chases after her, chases and chases; chases the warm, inviting girl that emerged from the soulless husk; the remainder of that husk; her shadow, the memories she nurtures deep inside of her and that mirror his own so well he can't always tell which are his and which are hers; the days of life she allowed him by choosing not to throw down that axe; that same axe, and the punishment he so craves.

She has long since regained her soul. He is still looking for his.

**Author's Note:**

> i dislike the perspective of dead gf sad dudes but its yet another price to pay for my special ships😔


End file.
